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COVID positive patients should delay surgery to reduce death risk

Team of Surgeons UR

Surgery should be delayed for seven weeks after a patient tests positive for COVID-19 – as operations taking place up to six weeks after diagnosis are associated with increased risk of death, according to a new global study.

Researchers discovered that patients are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to die after their operations, if the procedure takes places in the six weeks following a positive diagnosis for SARS-CoV-2.

Led by experts at the University of Birmingham, more than 25,000 surgeons including those from the University of Rwanda, worked together as part of the COVIDSurg Collaborative to collect data from 140,727 patients in 1,674 hospitals across 116 countries including Australia, Brazil, China, India, the UAE, UK, Rwanda and USA - creating one of the world’s largest and broadest studies on surgery.

Publishing their findings in Anaesthesia, the researchers discovered that patients operated 0-6 weeks after SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosis were at increased risk of postoperative death, as were patients with ongoing symptoms at the time of surgery.